Beauty School

FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT BEAUTY SCHOOL - PAGE 2

Brian Whitehead of Joliet wants to be the best high jumper in the world. But first he had to get his feet back on the ground. So he enrolled at the Joliet School of Beauty Culture. Although he is not in school now and has not finished the course, he said he has become a certified nail technician. "I do sculptured nails," he said. It is better than biting them. Whitehead's choice of career may be unconventional for an athlete, but before he came home from Muncie, Ind., where he had flunked out of Ball State, he was hanging from his fingertips.

Helen Graine Faulk, 92, who until her retirement this year was the oldest cosmetology teacher in Illinois, a glamorous and fiercely independent woman who once boasted she "could finger-wave a head of hair every five minutes"--and seemed to churn out a productive student almost as often--died of a heart attack Monday, April 1, in Trinity Hospital, Chicago. Made sleight by age and a bout with cancer that had no hope of keeping her down, Ms. Graine Faulk was a celebrity among the state's African-American beauticians.

Jesse Lawrence Howell, 72, who with his wife founded a beauty school chain and a cosmetics line for women of color, died of kidney failure Tuesday, Dec. 19, in Houston. Mr. Howell was drafted into the Army during the Korean War. Shortly after leaving the Army, Mr. Howell moved to Chicago, where he worked various jobs and started a family. After Mr. Howell married his second wife, Debbie Howell, a hairdresser and beautician, the couple founded Debbie's School of Beauty Culture on Madison Street in November 1964.

After fighting a relocation that seemed inevitable for more than two years, a downtown Arlington Heights school of cosmetology has reached a settlement with a developer to terminate its lease and vacate the site, slated for a high-rise condominium building. AT&T Investments Inc., developer of the Village Green multifamily complex, will help pay some of the relocation costs of the Arlington Academy Cosmetology Career Center, 201 W. Wing St. The beauty school will vacate the premises by Jan. 31 and reopen in a strip shopping center at Arlington Heights and Dundee Roads in Buffalo Grove.

Nine students at a Hanover Park beauty school were taken to hospitals Wednesday after suffering nausea and dizziness, a fire official said. A spokeswoman for Pennsylvania-based Empire Beauty Schools said the students were in a classroom at 1166 E. Lake St. working with nail polish, nail-polish remover and acrylics, which have strong odors, and ventilation was obstructed by a closed door, said Maureen Pinchock, the spokeswoman. The Hanover Park 911 center got a call from the school about 2:30 p.m., said fire Battalion Chief Rich Hish.

Willie J. Echols, operator of LaTee's Beauty School, 6404 S. Halsted St., and seven employees at the for-profit hair dressing school were indicted by a federal grand jury Wednesday on charges that they bilked federal student loan programs of nearly $700,000 between 1978 and 1984. The defendants are accused of filing school attendance reports and other documents with federal agencies that falsely showed that students at the school were from deprived backgrounds and were regularly attending classes.

Two brothers who operated now-defunct cosmetology schools in Chicago pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court to creating sham students and falsifying documents to fraudulently obtain about $1.3 million in federal education grants. Paul and Salvatore Scardino garnered grants for some 3,400 students between 1990 and 1992, according to prosecutors, while attendance records indicated only 23 of them completed the 1,500-hour course, and only 12 received state cosmetology licenses. As part of their plea agreements, the brothers, both of Park Ridge, agreed to make full restitution.

An American hairdresser's account of her time in Afghanistan, titled "Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil," has earned her fame, favorable reviews and talk of a movie. But a happy ending eludes the women Debbie Rodriguez left behind in Kabul. Their secrets revealed, the women say they feel used. Some are in hiding, and the salon is on the verge of closing. Correspondent Kim Barker gives her take. PERSPECTIVE

Ryan Vaia was stationed in Iraq when she first contacted Regency Beauty Institute earlier this year. The U.S. Marine Corps sergeant had worked in spas and salons in the past and dreamed of becoming a licensed cosmetologist. Vaia said she asked Regency whether she could use the Montgomery GI Bill to help pay her tuition. A customer service representative at the Minnesota-based beauty school said yes, she said. On March 30, just five days after she arrived home, Vaia enrolled at Regency's Aurora campus.

With all the tragedies going on in the world -- Iraq, Darfur, Afghanistan -- who has the time or the energy to think about hair? Shouldn't we all be helping out in some substantial way, volunteering as emergency workers and learning how to respond to natural -- or terrorist-caused -- catastrophes? So thinks Deborah Rodriguez, a hairdresser from Holland, Mich., who first becomes involved in emergency care when she goes to New York City in the days after the Sept.11, 2001, attacks.